LANCASTER - Imagine graduating from high school and within a few months starting a job that pays $15 an hour.

It's a dream, right?

For some Fairfield County high school seniors that dream could become a reality through a new program developed by the Fairfield 33 Development Alliance, local businesses and educators.

"What we're looking to really offer students who are graduating would be career kinds of jobs," said Renee Theiss, the student career navigator at Lancaster High School. "And these jobs are paying 13, 14 and 15 dollars an hour."

Theiss, a retired LHS guidance counselor, came back on a part-time basis this year to help guide some of the school's students through the program.

More than 40 local businesses partnered with the Fairfield 33 Development Alliance and the Fairfield County Economic and Workforce Development Department to develop the program. The 18-point checklist they developed helps guide students through the process by setting goals for them beginning their junior year.

"As we got together we really identified that it was soft skills [that employers were looking for]," Rick Szabrak, Fairfield County Economic and Workforce Development director, said.

"One of the things we have to teach young people is to be reliable employees," Theiss said. "We need people to understand that work value of showing up for work each day. Being able to pass a drug test and having the means to get to and from work."

Attending a job fair and mock interview, performing 20 hours of community service and attending school for 95% of the time are some of the other items on the checklist.

Completing that checklist and graduating means a student can get the endorsement. They're then guaranteed an interview with at least one of the participating business. If all goes well, they could end up with a good paying job right out of high school.

Business leaders in the community see it as a way to get new, reliable employees they desperately need.

Szabrak is part of the public-private partnership that makes up the Fairfield 33 Development Alliance. The group works to develop ways to coordinate economic development throughout the county, and Szabrak sees this new program as a way to boost that development.

"People tend to work where they know," Szabrak said. "And what most people think about when they think about jobs with high school degrees are what they've seen up and down Memorial Drive."

Instead of retail jobs, Szabrak wants students who enter the workforce after high school to consider employment with companies in the program like Mid West Fabricating, Company Wrench, Fairfield Medical Center and others that could lead to long term careers without a college degree. Recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that about 70% of graduating seniors attend college right away, at a school like Lancaster that would be about 138 students.

"We've got businesses like Onidea/Anchor Hocking that are hiring people at pretty good wages with just high school degrees and limited experience, and they're struggling to find people to fill those positions," Szabrak said.

"I have banged my head against the wall for years trying to figure out how can I, as an employer, get to these students and their parents and let them understand what I'm offering as a company, and there just really is no way to get to them," Mid West Fabricating CEO Jennifer Johns Friel said. The company makes parts for automotive and lawn care companies like General Motors, Tesla, John Deere and MTD Products at its Amanda headquarters and locations in Lancaster and California.

She said the missing link was an advocate in the schools to help focus on students not going to vocational school or college.

Friel hopes the career readiness program, with advocates like Szabrak, Theiss and others at school districts throughout the county, will change that.

"The reality is there are as many as 20% of every graduating high school class that those kids have no interest in vocational school or college," Friel said. "Zero interest. And the way things stood before the program, there was really no way for employers to talk to those kids about careers and there was no way for those kids to talk to employers about careers."

Friel sees the program as a bridge that will give employers the chance to meet students and show them the kind of future they can offer.

It's something she's been doing for awhile with Meet Mid West Days where students and their parents are invited into the company to see the manufacturing floor and meet people who work there and ask questions.

She sees these types of events and the program as a whole as a way to educate students and their families on how college isn't the only way to success after high school. Theiss agrees with the approach.

During the school day, she meets with students one-on-one in her small shared office at Lancaster High School. In those meetings, Theiss talks to students about their post-high school plans.

During a round of initial meetings, one student told her he planned to join the military; another student was planning to attend Columbus State Community College, a way, Theiss noted, to get a college education and limit a student's financial burden.

"Even with financial aid our kids in the lowest financial bracket still have to take out loans," Theiss said.

Theiss sees the career readiness program as a way to help ease that financial burden. She said many of the employers involved offer tuition reimbursement programs, and she explains to students they can work for a few years and then start taking classes to help them get a college degree if they still want it.

Mid West Fabricating is one of the employers that offer an educational reimbursement program. Friel said the company offers a 100% reimbursement if the employees want to continue their education and are successful at it, but it's not necessary to succeed the company.

"We have many, many people that have come here right out high school and now they're leaders in the business with a high school education because they have learned, they have trained, they have worked hard [and] they have proven themselves," Friel said.

"We have vice presidents in this company who have high school degrees," she added. "They're very, very capable people who didn't like school."